Boating to Work

Boats are on the water, cars are on the road. Boats are free to roam, cars are confined to lanes.

But when boat life becomes a part of every day life, the differences between the two fade away.

Commuting to work on a boat is the same as commuting to work in a car. Despite the vast open ocean meeting the shade of clouds on the horizon with nothing and no one in your way, commuting to work is still commuting to work.

You contemplate the work you are doing mostly. What do you really want to be doing with your skills, talents or ambitions? Could they be better used elsewhere, or applied differently? Are you deserving, are you replaceable?

You think about the workload ahead of you and daydream of the clock striking the hour that marks the end of your day.

Even when you commute to work on a boat, these thoughts plague your mind. Even when the mark of the wake on the glassy surface of the ocean gives you a visual reference of time passing and distance traveled. Even when the sun warms the deck and balances out the cool ocean breeze flowing through the boat as it glides to its destination. When fish leap from instant death via prop engine, when playful dolphins follow your tracks and coral reefs pass beneath you as if there were no water separating you at all. When arriving at the shore soaking wet is inevitable. Even when the shore itself becomes the destination rather than the job you are going to, commuting to work is still commuting to work.

The only thing that makes a commute something more than getting from where you are to where you work, is you. When you look around and actually see the endless horizon, the leaping dolphins and the colorful reefs, you are no longer commuting; you are an active participant in that thing called life.